Internationally renowned, award-winning wildlife filmmaker Arne Nævra and mountain climber, author and adventurer Stein P. Aasheim are happiest on terra firma. Despite this, both nursed an ambition to observe penguins and icebergs at close quarters from the deck of a small ship, a powered yacht - after first having traversed the stormy waters of the Drake Passage. To this end, following in the wake of Sir Ernest Shackleton, they embarked upon an adventurous expedition on which challenges and thrills came thick and fast.

Their voyage began in Port Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands. Together with two seasoned seafarers, in their sturdy little craft the two friends set a course for the Antarctic Ocean and South Georgia. This legendary island, once home to generations of whalers, is now an ocean oasis teeming with protected animals and birds, ranging from seals and penguins in their millions to albatrosses and whales. To their chagrin, Arne and Stein found that there were fewer whales than they had expected, one reason being their fellow-countrymen's merciless decimation of these giant creatures in years gone by. No fewer than one and half million whales were killed over a period of sixty years, a slaughter of unprecedented proportions. It may be said to have been Norway's first Oil Era.

Stein's prime interest was to find traces of the great explorers of yore - and, more particularly, to follow in the wake of the legendary Shackleton. One of his dreams was to step ashore on Elephant Island, deep in the Antarctic, where twenty-two of the British explorer's men survived for four long months in the cold and darkness of an Antarctic winter, until rescue finally came. Arne, for his part, loves animals and nature, and looked forward to becoming more closely acquainted with the Antarctic fauna, which have no fear of man. He has had many close encounters with polar bears in the Arctic, but this time his heart was set on meeting the polar bear's southern counterpart, the fearsome leopard seal - face to face, underwater!